"EPA Wants Companies to Reuse Water to Cool Data Centers," The Wall Street Journal
The Wall St. Journal: The announcement is the latest that the EPA has aligned with the MAHA movement’s worries about chemicals in drinking water
The Environmental Protection Agency said it wants to help boost water reuse strategies for companies to cool data centers that drive artificial intelligence.
The EPA on Thursday announced an initiative to help reuse water, partly in an effort to assist data centers that need to lower the temperatures of the electrical equipment that powers AI. The EPA said that, outside of data-center cooling, the initiative focuses on water needed for microchips and batteries, automobile and food and beverage manufacturing, as well as agriculture production.
Public concerns about the water used to cool electrical equipment at data centers are rising—particularly in arid areas where there is less water to go around, and data centers need more of it to quell temperatures at their sites. Earlier this week, the city of Oakley, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area took measures to tackle water concerns by temporarily halting new data-center projects.
Large data centers can guzzle up to 5 million gallons of water daily, which is equivalent to the daily usage of a town with about 10,000 to 50,000 residents, according to a study on the Environmental and Energy Study Institute’s website.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described the water reuse plan as “a big win for the MAHA Agenda” because reusing water preserves freshwater, which reduces the amount of wastewater that enters the environment. This follows an announcement earlier this month that the EPA also aligned with the Make America Healthy Again movement, when the regulator added microplastics, certain pharmaceuticals and other contaminants to a drinking water watchlist. The MAHA movement has butted heads with the environmental regulator at times over chemical rules.
The EPA made the latest water announcement alongside companies and groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Suzanne Clark, president and chief executive of the Chamber, said the effort “advances industry-led approaches to secure a reliable water supply.”
Zeldin pointed to companies including Google, Meta and Microsoft that he said frequently reference their water demands, and their desire to reuse water for data centers.
“I don’t have to question or pry it out of them,” he said.
Google, for example, has issued a report that says each query a user asks Gemini consumes about five drops of water.
But there’s still a lot of uncertainty about how much water is consumed at data centers across the country, as businesses are fairly tight-lipped about the details of their specific operations.
There are further water demands for data centers to consider, outside of the physical buildings themselves: Fossil fuel plants powering data centers produce a lot of steam to create electricity, and semiconductors and computer chips also require a lot of water during manufacturing.
At a separate appearance earlier in the day, Zeldin said a lot of people talk about the power demands of AI, “but there’s not a lot of emphasis on the water impact.”
Zeldin also spoke about the EPA’s recent water contaminant announcement, which included potential scrutiny on PFAS, known as forever chemicals, in drinking water—another issue that has been a lightning rod for MAHA.
“I constantly have people and companies coming to me, talking about their new technology to destroy PFAS, to be able to clean up PFAS from drinking water,” he said.
Zeldin said it is on Congress to pass new legislation to ensure that ratepayers won’t have to clean up PFAS contamination in their drinking water supply.